Ssymbol of peace around his neck, a handful of chains with various trinkets together with a soldier’s identification plate in war, bracelets and metal chains on the wrists, his forearms covered by two bluish tattoos. A black corsair hat and a blue-grey checkered country shirt that has little to do with his modern-day Salgari character outfit. Billy Bob Thornton that’s how it is, it escapes any cataloging. It’s one mixture of style, talent, beliefs, interestsand lives lived and started over again. Pretty explosive.
These days it is on the small screen (Paramount+), in the series Landmanin a new incarnation: himself in the Texan version. «I know Texas well, and the oil business is interesting, I like it, it’s a bit like playing rouletteyou can make a lot of money, and suddenly lose it all. I read the script and said to Taylor, “Come on, this is me.” And Taylor: “Well, I wrote it for you!”».
Thornton talks about Taylor Sheridan, the creator of the series that tells a cross-section of West Texas. Among oil platforms, adventurers and unscrupulous billionaires, Thornton is the protagonist, Tommy Morris, a manager expert in crises in the M-Tex Oil company.
Billy Bob Thornton in “Landman”. Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+
Western hat, cigarette always lit, consumed by life and alcohol – Morris is undergoing detox and only drinks non-alcoholic beers – he has a debt of 500 thousand dollars to pay off quickly, so must negotiate deals between profit-obsessed oilmen and a Mexican drug cartelintervening when lethal fires erupt (in the first episode three workers are blown up) and, last but not least, dealing with often corrupt government bodies.
His world is harsh, violent, but his most strenuous battle Tommy – here the traditional model of the American frontier epic is overturned and crosses over into a soap opera – fights it in the family, where his women, his teenage daughter and ex-wife Angela, embody the Kardashian ideal of the voluptuous and ostentatiously undressed female. Tommy Morris, cynical and disillusioned, an old man from Texas who fearlessly faces drug bosses, doesn’t know how to move on this terrain. For this reason, he, Thornton, confesses – with an ironic smile – that he has no difficulty identifying with the character.
Billy Bob Thornton, six marriages and four children
Sixty-nine years old, six marriages – the most famous with Angelina Jolie – four children, an ambiguous, often broken relationship with Hollywood, Billy Bob Thornton he is a writer, actor, director and musician (his first album was in 2001), protagonist of independent cinema – with Sling Blade – Sharp blade won an Oscar in 1996 – but also blockbusters like Armageddon and cheeky black comedies like Bad Santa – Bastard Santa.
Billy Bob Thornton in “Fargo” (2014).
Always candid in interviews – in which has often spoken about his obsessive-compulsive disorder –magnetic in his interpretations, his is a story reminiscent of a Victorian novel with various Hollywood implications: grew up in Arkansas in a house without electricity or drinking waterhalfway through 1980s he decides to become an actor and moves to Los Angeles. There Billy Wilder – Billy Bob meets him in a restaurant where he worked as a waiter – convinces him to write. He follows the suggestion. The screenplays are his All the Pretty Horses – Rebel passion – which will become a film with Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz – and The Giftstarring Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves. Today, music remains his passionbut it still does a little bit of everything.
Touring with the rock band, the Boxmasters
I meet him on Zoom during a break in his schedule tour with the rock band Boxmasters (it’s in Florence, Alabama) to talk about Landman, series inspired by the podcast Boomtown by journalist Christian Wallace, and “his” women: the voluptuous ex-wife, the spoiled daughter who is even sexier than her mother, and finally the trophy wife of her boss (played by Jon Hamm), a resurrected Demi Moore after returning in style with The Substancewho here has only one task: swimming in the pool between one party and another.
Billy Bob Thornton is Tommy Norris in “Landman”. Photo Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+
Landmanloved by audiences but less so by critics, if it doesn’t have the strength to Yellowstone, the western series with Kevin Costner, however, allows Billy Bob to present himself in a revisited Rock Hudson version. So very sensual: “Soft-core porn for âgé gentlemen”, he defined it Use Today.
The last time we spoke was for Bad Santa 2in 2016. Then she disappeared from Hollywood.
Wow, that’s true! And we met in person then! We spoke to each other, in front of each other. Times change, and we change too. What do we want to talk about after eight years? (laughs)
Billy Bob Thornton and women
From Landmanand women. Landman takes us back to the times of Dallas And Dynastysoaps full of intrigue and oil tycoons from the 1980s. A world dominated by men of one piece, a symbol of domineering and violent virility, where female characters were generally stereotypes. Tommy Norris, his character, belongs to that category of apparently inflexible and braggart “macho men”. Then he collapses with Aynsley, his teenage daughter, and loses all security and defense with her. Did he identify himself?
It is true (smiles), I’m happy that you noticed, because my relationship with Michelle Randolph, who plays my daughter in the film, was immediate and easy from the first moment. Maybe it’s because in all these years I have frequently acted with young actors, Lucas Black in Slingbladethe boys of What a blow if you encounter bearsScarlett Johansson in The man who wasn’t therewhen she was really young, and I always had a vaguely paternal attitude towards them. So this time too it came naturally to me to feel protective, because my daughter Bella – remember? I’ve been talking to her about her practically since she was born – she’s twenty now, and in college. I didn’t have to do any research to play the role of the anxious, worried and protective father.
Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie in “False Track” (1999).
Yet she changes personality and attitude, and the dynamics are different, when dealing with her son Cooper in Landman. Does this happen to you in real life too?
It is true! I have two sons and my relationship with them is like good friends, like old play buddies. When they were little, if one of them fell and split his lip, I told him: “Don’t you ever dare jump off the table again!” But if my daughter jumped, I, the daddy hen, had to immediately intervene and protect her. The relationship that is established between father and daughter is truly different from that between father and children. I mean, for goodness sake, I love them all equally, but…
And then there is the relationship that Tommy has with Angela, his ex-wife, now remarried, a tempting siren who would still like to seduce him, make him capitulate.
Well, this is how I see it: when Angela and Tommy met when they were young, there was a spark. Sometimes very different people feel this intense attraction male female, female male, male male, whatever you want to call it, which is uncontrollable. You just know that it’s her, it’s “that” the right person, you recognize her. For Tommy, Angela was “the one”, and he was for her, even if he is now an exhausted and battered man, while she always remains provocative and perky. Angela is attracted to material things, Tommy is just the opposite, and the only common point – not to mince words – is that they can’t keep their hands to themselves when they’re close together. There is this sexual tension that is stronger than them, everything else doesn’t matter.
You are approaching seventy: what do you find fundamental in a relationship, what do you look for in a partner?
Connie, my wife, and I have been together for 22 years. We got married about ten years ago and, as I was saying, our daughter, Bella, is now twenty years old. I think the most important thing is our friendship and the fact that we have created a family: conceiving and having a child together makes you feel even more connected. Loving a daughter so deeply makes you feel even closer. And then… Connie doesn’t let any of my stupid things get through. And I think I need exactly this (laughs).
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